Abstract
Bipolar cells form parallel channels that carry visual signals from the outer to the inner retina. Each type of bipolar cell is thought to carry a distinct visual message to select types of amacrine cells and ganglion cells. However, the number of ganglion cell types exceeds that of the bipolar cells providing their input, suggesting that bipolar cell signals diversify on transmission to ganglion cells. We explored in the salamander retina how signals from individual bipolar cells feed into multiple ganglion cells and found that each bipolar cell was able to evoke distinct responses among ganglion cells, differing in kinetics, adaptation and rectification properties. This signal divergence resulted primarily from interactions with amacrine cells that allowed each bipolar cell to send distinct signals to its target ganglion cells. Our findings indicate that individual bipolar cell–ganglion cell connections have distinct transfer functions. This expands the number of visual channels in the inner retina and enhances the computational power and feature selectivity of early visual processing.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge E. Soucy for his extensive help with the experiments, as well as all of the members of the Meister laboratory for many useful discussions. This work was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship for Research Abroad from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (H.A.) and grants from the US National Institutes of Health (M.M.).
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H.A. and M.M. designed the study and wrote the manuscript. H.A. performed the experiments and analysis.
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Asari, H., Meister, M. Divergence of visual channels in the inner retina. Nat Neurosci 15, 1581–1589 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3241
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3241
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